Since December of last year, I’ve been working on this comic. The point was to just start making comics – even if they are crudely drawn (and boy, are they). I decided to take conversations from IM, twitter, real life, etc. and make crudely drawn depictions of the people involved. The result can be described as “stick figures with no anti-aliasing”.

The most recent strip, as of this writing.

The art is all done in the Windows 7 version of Paint, which has posed a few challenges – but I’m just telling myself it adds character to the strips. You guys believe that, right? The website was also drawn in paint, but spliced up in Photoshop. So far, the only people who’ve seen the comics are the ones who make appearances in a strip. Now, anyone who subscribes to my RSS feed gets the link about 5 minutes before it goes public on twitter / facebook. Fun!

You can follow the comic’s twitter account @icanwebcomictoo. Hopefully I can get an RSS feed for the comic up in a few days.

And when you click delete on an article, you get the following prompt.

As the annotations illustrate, theres a fair distance to move between the delete link of a page near the bottom and the buttons to accept/cancel the prompt. My first idea was to simply move the prompt beside the article you’re deleting with some fancy javascript popup. It might look something like this:

However popups are slightly annoying, they may cover some other content (in this case, the ads for Instapaper subscriptions – which the people in charge likely won’t want hidden), and this still requires you to move the mouse – though a considerably shorter distance. So back to the drawing board I went. Solution two was to change what’s displayed in the “Source – Date – Share – Edit – Delete” area to an in-line prompt:

This way, if the user really did want to delete that page, all they have to do is click again – the “Yes, delete it” link is directly underneath where the “Delete” link was. Now my choice of colours/font is rough, but the idea is clear. After clicking yes, the section for that page would be removed from the list. After clicking no, the prompt would go away (possibly via a nice animation) and the previous “Source – Date – Share – Edit – Delete” display would return. Note two choices I did make though:

1. Using actions instead of simple Yes/No responses. This makes it clear to the user what they’ll be doing when they click one of the choices. Additionally, it may become clear what they are being promted to do just by reading their options.
2. Normally, the positive action (in this case “Yes, delete it”) is the first option on the left, and the negative action is on the right. This is how I arranged the responses in my first solution. In this one, I reversed the responses so that the user could click again without having to move their mouse if they did intend to delete the page. However, this may break some mental models – which would likely make the trade-off not worth it. Usability testing here may be required.

And that’s it! If you have other ideas, or thoughts on the ones I suggested – leave ‘em in the comments.

Today’s example of intuition-to-principle comes to us from Instapaper. I got on the Instapaper bandwagon a bit later than most people – as in I started using it last week. So as I’m playing around with it today, I wanted to delete one of the articles I had saved and subsequently finished reading. Now, to their credit, what happens next  isn’t entirely a bad thing. When you delete an article instead of archiving it, a little message window pops up asking you if you want to ‘permanently remove this item from your account’. This is a good thing, but what sucks is the placement of the pop up.

Because Instapaper is using what seems to be a simple javascript alert to accomplish this, the alert appears in the middle of your browser window. This accomplishes the task of letting the user decide to cancel deletion, but in a disruptive manner. Why is it disruptive? Not only does the alert prevent you from continuing until you deal with it, but you have to move your cursor from the item you were deleting, to the prompt. It may not seem like the biggest deal, but when you’re deleting lots of items, the time it takes to mouse back and forth gets annoying quick.

The fun part of all this, is I’m not the first person to discover the fact that the time it takes to move your mouse around the screen can degrade a user’s experience. Fitts’s law, according to wikipedia, ‘is a model of human movement in human–computer interaction and ergonomics that predicts that the time required to rapidly move to a target area is a function of the distance to and the size of the target’.

Designers have been keeping Fitts’s law in mind for a while now, because a reduction in time taken to perform a task causes an increase in perceived efficiency and ease-of-use.  So as it turns out, you don’t need to know every design principle in order to enhance the user experience of a product, but know a few here and there can help you explain why there is a need to change in the first place.

Kylie Minogue – In Your Eyes
Beck – Everyone’s Gotta Learn Sometime
Daft Punk – Harder, Better, Faster, Strong (The Neptunes Remix)
The Brothers Johnson – Strawberry Letter #23
New Order – Bizarre Love Triangle
DJ Mehdi – Lucky Boy
Duck Sauce – Barbra Streisand
FantomenK – The Massacre
FantomenK – CPU Mood
DJ Mehdi – Signatune (T. Bangalter Edit)
Depeche Mode – In Chains
Depeche Mode – In Sympathy
Deadmau5 – Meowingtons Enables Hax
Stimming – Melodica
Daft Punk – Derezzed
Midnight Juggernauts – Vital Signs
Midnight Juggernauts – Shadows
Midnight Juggernauts – Fire Below
Digitalism – Blitz
Digitalism – Stratosphere
Luciana – I Like That
Masta Mic – Best DNB Beatbox
Masta Mic – New Beatbox
Masta Mic – Halloweeen Beatbox

This playlist is available on YouTube here. If you like the songs, buy them! I can’t guaruntee how long the videos in this playlist will stick around either.

I like the idea of not having to open up another IM client to talk to my friends who use Google Talk instead of Windows Live Messenger. Until Microsoft actually implements cross-protocol IM like they said they were going to back in the day, I stick with using both Google Talk inside of Gmail and Windows Live Messenger.

The Problem

The problem I have though, is that I don’t like my instant messengers beeping at me when I get messages. I prefer visual cues, like how Windows Live Messenger makes the taskbar icon flash. Unfortunately, Google Talk in Gmail does not do this! Back in the days of XP and Vista, the problem was solved by changing the title of the page from “Gmail – …” to “New message from contact” or something to that effect. This would cause a sort of blinking animation in the task bar – as Firefox’s taskbar icon title just shows the title of whatever site you’re currently on.

However, since Windows 7 doesn’t display window titles in the task bar by default – and I rather like this setting – I have no good means of determining when a message has arrived for me. Sure, due to the translucent nature of my window decorations, sometimes I notice the blinking title bar anyway – but its not reliable.

The Idea

Gmail Labs rolls out new features that users can opt into all the time! If one of these new features were to make the browser icon in the toolbar flash when a new message arrives – similar to Windows Live Messenger does – the problem could be solved. However, I’m not entirely sure that’s something a browser lets you do, so unfortunately a plug-in might be required. Either way, the people behind Gmail Labs are smart, and I’m sure they can solve the problem as long as they’re aware the problem exists!

This is part 2 of my post on Ignite Waterloo 4. For part 1, click here!

Alright people, lets continue talking about more of the awesome 5-minute presentations I witnessed on last Thursday!

Doug Moen: The 3-D Printer Revolution

Doug brought us the terrifying topic of 3D printers, what they are, how they work, and why they’ll spell our doom. Okay, I might have exaggerated that last one, but seriously – these things are creepy. A 3D printer is basically a device that can print three dimensional objects – layer by layer. Imagine if you took rapid horizontal cross sections of an object, and then stacked them ontop of each other? Thats sort of what a 3D printer does, but instead of a stack, you something very closely approximating the original object. The best worst part? There are 3D printers that can print the requisite pieces to make a new 3D printer. That’s right, our technology is self replicating. Its only a matter of time before Skynet is formed and we’re all doomed. Doug is associated with KwartzLab, a local hackerspace. I couldn’t find his twitter handle, but you might be able to get a hold him through KwartzLab!

Brydon Gilliss: Change the World

Brydon (twitter: @Brydon) gave a talk that was hilarious, entertaining, and rather enlightening. You see, Brydon realized that by drinking beer, he was slowly killing the environment. Apparently, not much glass from a beer bottle is actually recycled. So Brydon looked to solve this problem, one pint at a time. By installing a beer fridge, ordering a keg of beer a month, and storing said keg inside his beer fridge, Brydon knocked his beer consumption price to about 2 dollars a beer, with zero beer bottles (after initial setup costs). Now I can’t say how, but he also mentioned that you might be able to get local breweries to give you a better price on kegs.

Jonathan Fritz: Intellectual Property and Bill C-32

Jon (twitter: @jonathanmfritz) spoke about the pesky Bill C-32 and the problems it brings to Canadians who want to back up their media in a digital form. Apparently Bill C-32 would prevent you from backing up your media if there is any from of Digital Rights Management on it – even if you legally own a copy of the media and are just trying to watch it on your PC, iPad, etc. Jon also attempted to decipher some of the legalese surrounding copyright, how long it lasts, and what it means for new artists. Jon mentioned that he only broached the tip of this topic’s iceberg and encouraged the audience to get in touch with him to learn more! So if you want to know more, check out that handy twitter ID I supplied to get in touch!

Melanie Baker: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

Melanie (twitter: @melle) debriefed us on how to survive the zombie apocalypse. Apparently, Plants vs. Zombies is not a very good indication of what to expect. Some key pointers were that most literature on the topic is mostly useless, and that common sense and a certain level of physical fitness would help you just as much. Lessons learned? Aim for the head, destroy the brain, water is good (slows down the zombies, natch) and Batman will still be around to help!

Wow, Those Sounded Great!

They were great! And I didn’t even touch on all of presentations, all of which were really interesting and thought provoking. I’m glad to have been able to share some of my experiences from the event, but the best way to learn about this stuff isn’t to read about it on blogs (but please, don’t stop visiting my blog!) but to come out to these events yourself! I’m just doing my part to get people out to awesome events like these. Hopefully I’ll see you at Ignite Waterloo 5!

Update [2010-11-24]: The videos have been posted! Find ‘em here. Thanks again to Philip Bast!

First of all, you may be asking what is Ignite? Ignite conferences are a series of 5 minute talks on anything, accompanied by slide shows that auto advance every 15 seconds. Their mantra is “enlighten us but make it quick”. Sound interesting? Keep reading.

There have been three Ignite Events in Waterloo  (aptly labelled Ignite Waterloo 1-3). I had tickets to the last one, but I ended up bailing the day of due to illness. I now wish I’d just sucked it up and gone anyways.

I showed up around 6 o’clock when doors opened, and got a chance to chat with Mark Connolly who is one of two the co-creators of uxWaterloo. About an hour later I grabbed some seats for my good friends Jon and Tyler, and started snapping pictures of the crowd. At 7:30 my friends had arrived and the presentations started! I’m not going to highlight them all (the full list is available here), but once the videos get uploaded to YouTube by Philip Bast (the volunteer videographer for the event), I’ll update this post with links!

Mike Shanks: Combining Passions

Mike (twitter: @mikepgww) gave a talk on comining passions. In his case, he wanted to combine his passion for running, with his passion for drinking beer. Apparently, there are like minded individuals who participate in something called the beer mile. This involves chugging a beer, then running a quarter-mile, chugging another beer, then running another quarter-mile, a beer, a quarter-mile, abeeraquartermile and you’re done. Mike walked us through this process, including such descriptive phrases as “Shit! Beer is carbonated”, “burpin’ around the corner”, and “Shit! Beer is still carbonated!”

Sean Puckett: The Smart Camera

Sean (web: http://photi.ca) presented us with the evolution of the camera from a dumb instrument – one that does only what its user asks of it – to a device combined with the power of 1/10th of a super computer, and a connection to the internet. Turns out 1/10th of a super computer is a whole hell of a lot, and a connection to the internet affords you “the whole of human knowledge”, allowing you to do crazy things like live translation of text written in one alphabet to another, or take a picture of someone and find out who they are, or overlay information about whatever you’re looking (folks in the biz call this augmented reality, I’m told).

Cari Howard: Garbage In, Nothing Out: It Doesn’t Go Away!

Cari (twitter: @ariesamazon) informed us of the fact that the Waterloo region’s land fills have about 20 years left. 20 years. Thats not a lot of time. After that, where are we going to put our garbage? She implored us to reduce and reuse before recycling. Turns out that even though recycling is a good thing, its not nearly as efficient as reducing or reusing your goods. Also interesting, was some details she shared on future technologies to deal with waste disposal. The short version is they use something called a plasma torch to shoot a bolt of lightning into the garbage. This apparently produces no harmful waste except some gases, which can fortunately be collected and used to charge your next bolt of lightning! Very cool.

Linda Carson: Art: WTF?

Linda Carson (twitter: @lccarson) went to art school so we didn’t have to. This amazingly titled presentation began with a picture of Damien Hirst’s For the Love of God. This, as Linda told us is a type of art called a vanitas. A vanitas is, as I understand it, a piece of art meant to remind us of our mortality. It started out with depictions of skulls, then depiction of skulls in ways that you can only see them from a certain angle. Then partially butchered animal carcasses, then partially butchered human carcasses. Then, in 1987 (I was totally born that year!) Canadian artist Jana Sterbak created a vanitas of a woman wearing a dress made of meat. Sound familiar? Yep. Lady Gaga was not just being strange, she was referencing years of art history. At the very end of her talk, she told us what I told you at the start: Linda Carson went to art school so we didn’t have to.

Oh God There Were More?

Yes, and they were all good. In fact, the ones I’ve covered here are only a sampling from the first half of the presentations! I’ll try and get more reviews up here, but this post is long enough for now. Stay tuned for part 2!

Update [2010-11-23]: Part 2 has been posted, and is available for your reading pleasure here.

Update [2010-11-24]: The videos have been posted! Find ‘em here. Thanks again to Philip Bast!

It was a very interesting talk – which I may get into in more detail in another blog post – but my interest was piqued on another topic before our guest speaker even took the stage. While waiting for everyone to take their seats I was socializing with a few of the other attendees. In advance, if either of the two ladies I was speaking to tonight end up reading this – I’m very sorry I forgot your names!

During some light conversation about our interests in user experience related fields – one of these ladies (we’ll call her Alice) wanted to add the other (we’ll call her Brenda) to LinkedIn. Alice asked Brenda if she was on LinkedIn, and after Brenda said yes, Alice proceeded to pull out her BlackBerry to look Brenda up.

It was at this point that I asked them “won’t it be interesting when your phone will have opened up LinkedIn and already searched for Brenda because it heard our conversation?”. We all kind of laughed, and commented on how that technology was not quite ready for that yet with big smiles. Phones reacting to your conversations? Sorcery I say!

However ridiculous this concept sounds, we might not be that far off.

Technologies such as Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Kinect have (as I’ve heard) very intelligent voice detection – to the point where it knows the difference between the voices of the users in the room. It’s not a stretch to imagine Microsoft putting similar technology into their newly launched Windows Phone 7 to enable this very sort of thing. It would be a very interesting shift in user experience design for applications to know what you want to do before you’ve decided to do it.

In my opinion, the change room is the most important part because that’s where I ultimately decide if I am going to spend money at the shop or not. Shops whose change rooms made this process easier got more of my money – unless their products were complete crap of course.

What struck me as interesting is that without knowing it, I’d been conducting a usability study on the user experience of shoppers – where in this case the user was the customer at a particular shop. As a result of this impromptu study I put together a list of qualities a good change room should have based on my own experiences hopping around from shop to shop.

The list is as follows:

Have mirrors in each change room.

This is such an easy one. Your want to see how they look, but they might not want everyone else in the store or change room area to see.

Have an change room area separate from the rest of the store.

Lots of people come to clothes stores with a friend, or in groups. When a shopper does decide to come out of the change room to get opinions, they probably only want them from their entourage – not the rest of the store.

Have mirrors in the change room area.

Sometimes what you’re trying on looks great in the change room, but once you see it out in the open or a member of your entourage points out a problem, it’s nice to have a mirror to double check. Additionally, it provides a clear point of congregation for shoppers and their entourage. Placed carefully, change room area mirrors can direct traffic so people aren’t standing around in awkward spots in the area looking at each other.

Have seating in your change room area.

It can be a pain when you’re waiting around for your fellow shopper to come out and show you the items they’re trying on. Especially when they have a bunch to try on. Providing seating for the members of a shopper’s entourage is a courtesy that I thoroughly enjoy when I get dragged out to shop with other people.

Have a place to hang clothes.

When you come into a change room with multiple items, it’s nice to have a hook to hang all the  items so you can look at them one by one. Having multiple hooks helps the shopper keep track of the items they like and don’t like as well.

Have a place to set the clothes down.

I’ve been in far too many change rooms where they do provide a spot to hang clothes, but what’s all you get. A bench provides a nice place to set things  because lets face it, putting clothes on the ground in these rooms feels a bit bad. Also, it can be pain to re-hang everything, especially those items you’re not even going to buy. Don’t want them? Toss ‘em on the bench.

This list is not at all exhaustive,  but the best change rooms – and by extension the best stores – I’ve been in have implemented most or all of these ideas, and are the ones I continue to shop at. Just remember, even the best change room can’t make up for crappy products!

Recently, I’ve been reorganizing my computers based on their usage. My old HTPC, has resumed its duties as my primary desktop/server, my Mac Mini has been attached to the my desktop through Synergy, my server was given to my brother for personal use, and his old computer – a nettop – is now being used as our new HTPC.

After a painful decision making process – a topic for another time, and another post – I decided that this nettop, named Apollo after the Greek god of many things including “music, poetry, and the arts” [as close as I could get to entertainment],  should run Ubuntu 10.4 with XBMC as the media center app. After testing it’s media playback capabilities from a local file, I was rather impressed. I set out to add a SMB share from within XBMC, and was prompted to add a username and password.

I wasn’t really expecting this, because Leviathan – my desktop/sever running Windows 7 – has public sharing turned on, as well as a guest account. I entered in my credentials, and was asked yet again for a username and password. After trying multiple times, I decided to quit XBMC and see if I could get Ubuntu to connect to the share. Here too, I was prompted for a username and password, again and again.

Next I headed to the terminal to run smbclient. This didn’t work either, as I was shown a message saying smbclient failed with “SUCCESS – 0″. I guess success shouldn’t be zero, so my next move was to attempt mounting the network share using CIFS. Again, I was met with repeated defeat.

Begrudgingly I took to the internet with my problem, only to find that there were many people unable to connect to their Windows 7 from Ubuntu. The suggestions ranged from registry hacks to group policy administration, none of which worked. One repeated suggestion however, was to un-install the Windows Live Sign-in Assistant. However, as a user of the Windows Live Essentials (Wave 4) Beta that was recently released – I had no such program. I did however have a similar application called the Windows Live Messenger Companion, which I chose to uninstall – again, to no avail.

However, I soon reasoned that perhaps whatever was blocking people using the Windows Live Sign-in Assistant was now being used within the actual Windows Live Messenger client or the other Windows Live Essentials apps that I’d recently installed. I started by uninstalling everything but Windows Live Messenger – because I really, really like the beta version. Alas, this did not help. Next I uninstalled the actual Windows Live Messenger client and voila – I was able to connect with no prompting for passwords at all. Because that makes -any- sense.

As a matter of interest, I installed the regular WLM non-beta client and made sure that the Windows Live Sign-in Assistant was installed, and tried to connect again. Not surprisingly, I was no longer able to connect to my Windows 7 shares. After un-installing the Windows Live Sign-in Assistant my shares were back up and I was mostly happy. Except that I couldn’t use the new Windows Live Messenger beta.

I can’t be sure if the other tinkering I did also helped clear up my problems, but as a recap here are the steps I recommend to access your Windows 7 shares from Ubuntu:

1) If you have the Windows Live Essentials (Wave 4) beta installed, you’ll have to uninstall all of the applications that come with this. For now, you can install the current version of Windows Live Messenger and the other Windows Live Essentials.

2) If you have Windows Live Messenger installed, or ANY of the Windows Live Essentials programs installed check to see if you have the Windows Live Sign-in Assistant installed. If so, uninstall it.

3) Hopefully, now you can enjoy your Windows 7 shares in Ubuntu

Important Note:

Beta software has this nasty habit of leaving beta status sooner or later. If this issue is not resolved when the newest version of Windows Live Messenger is officially released, you may not be able to use the Window Live Messenger client if you need your Windows 7 shares from Ubuntu. I would suggest using an application like Pidgin as your instant messenger, as it can also connect to the Windows Live Messenger service. Other options include Digsby, Miranda, and Trillian.

Software mentioned in this article:

Windows Live Messenger
Windows Live Essentials (Wave 4) beta
Synergy
XBMC
Ubuntu 10.4
Pidgin
Digsby
Miranda IM
Trillian